Emery High and Sheriff's Office team up for trainings

Emery High drama department and the Emery County Sheriff's Office emergency team responded to Emery High for a mock drill. Each spring before school lets out for the summer the two team up for training. The training is important for the responders to learn the layout of the school in the event of an emergency. Neal Peacock is the drama teacher at Emery High and the students are glad to help out as they play the parts of injured students and the role of the criminals in the event.

Peacock said, "This is an eye opening experience for the kids to see how good our SWAT teams are in the county. It amazes the kids how good these officers are at their job. It is a fun challenge to stump the officers and they look forward to it. In this scenario Devin Hales was a shooter and Colton Leavitt a hostage. There were several hostages on the stage. Shooters Ben Cox and Brittany Lofthouse were under the stage. There were four shooters in all. Dallin Lemon was in the storage loft and was found right away. The kids do a good job, we try to think up hard things and the Emergency Response Team handles it really well. All the students roles are drawn at random."

In this scenario it played out in the school auditorium where a shooter had taken hostages. The shooters hid in the auditorium until the rescuers and officers searched methodically until they were found. A staging area was set-up outside the school where the local Emergency Medical Technicians were on hand to evaluate the fake injuries. They set-up three areas for the varying degrees of injuries. EMTS were allowed into a secured area of the auditorium where they transported the victims out into the parking lot.

Sheriff LaMar Guymon said, "Training is so important for our sheriff's office and the other emergency management services. In a crisis it's so important to learn to work together to learn our roles and how we fit together. Training shows us how we can more fully meet the needs of each organization and clearly define the roles of each organization in an emergency. Our agencies work well together, but there is always room for improvement. These training exercises offer insight into where we can make improvements, adjustments, and they also let us know what is working. Overall we do very well together. I am thankful for the caliber of people we have in our emergency organizations. We have learned places where we have deficiencies and will work on those.

"These training exercises give everyone a new perspective on their roles in an emergency and the importance of each role. Everyone plays a vital part in these exercises. Working together is vital to our success," concluded Sheriff Guymon.